The Young and the Restless Hires Dan O'Connor and Jamey Giddens as the Show's New Head Writing Team

The search for the new head writers of The Young and the Restless is over! Soap Central has heard that Dan O'Connor and Jamey Giddens are set to take over the head writing chores and will begin their new roles next week. The two are replacing Josh Griffith, who is exiting the show after a long run as head writer.

The Right Stuff

O'Connor has been a writer at One Life to Live, General Hospital, and Days of our Lives. Giddens co-founded and served as editorial director of Daytime Confidential. He became a soap opera creator with the launch of Ambitions, a nighttime serial on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

From there, he went to write at DAYS, and then joined the writing team of Beyond the Gates, which reunited him with BTG's creator, Michele Val Jean, whom Giddens had employed on Ambitions.

Earlier this year, Griffith announced he was stepping down as executive producer so he could focus primarily on head writing duties. That's when Sally McDonald, the show's co-executive producer, was bumped up to executive producer.

Then came word that Griffith was exiting the show. Recently, Y&R topped the Daytime Emmys 2026 nomination list with 16 nods.

From Fairmont Crest to Genoa City

Might we see more crossovers between Fairmont Crest, BTG's setting, and Genoa City, where Y&R is situated, now that Giddens is going to be Y&R's co-head writer? Time will tell.

Y&R was co-created by the late William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell. William J. Bell served as the show's head writer from its inception until 1998, when he stepped down as head writer, becoming the show's executive story consultant. He passed away in 2005. Lee Phillip Bell, the show's co-creator, passed away in 2020.

The original families of Y&R were the Fosters and the Brooks clans. In the early 1980s, viewers saw the Fosters and the Brooks families phased out while the Abbotts, Newmans, and Williams families became prominent.

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The characters of Katherine Chancellor (the late Jeanne Cooper) and Jill Foster (Jess Walton took on the role of Jill in 1987) remained on the show.

Y&R tapes approximately six weeks ahead (sometimes more or less, depending on scheduling), viewers might be able to expect to see the new head writers' material start to debut before the end of the summer.

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